telepathy works

maayan danoch
tel aviv

Telepa­thy Works is a phys­i­cal-men­tal prac­tice, deal­ing with col­lec­tive con­scious­ness and move­ment. It aims to stim­u­late syn­chronic­i­ty of thought and action between two peo­ple (or more) and sum­mon tele­path­ic moments. It pro­motes think­ing on telepa­thy as a human abil­i­ty that can be devel­oped rather than a super­nat­ur­al phenomenon.

 

See­ing the human body as a cen­tral com­mon dom­i­na­tor to all human beings, the prac­tice relies and advances body sen­si­bil­i­ties as a primer resource for con­nect­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with oth­ers. Through var­i­ous exer­cis­es, we will enhance our capac­i­ty for lis­ten­ing and becom­ing atten­tive towards our­selves and oth­ers. We will work with dif­fer­ent modes of men­tal imag­ing and explore their pow­er to change what we per­ceive, feel and do. At last, we will fol­low longer pro­ce­dures, through which we will estab­lish an (imag­i­nary) emphat­ic rela­tion­ship with anoth­er per­son. In these frame­works, we will use the tools we gained to instant­ly ini­ti­ate a com­mon action with our part­ner inde­pen­dent of ver­bal dia­logue or pro­to­cols of col­lec­tive deci­sion making.

 

The prac­tice ses­sions will hap­pen both online and as live events. They invite inves­ti­ga­tion and a crit­i­cal reflec­tion on how bod­i­ly and inter­per­son­al knowl­edge can be shared through a dig­i­tal media.

Par­tic­i­pants: Tea Maršanić, Mia Štark, Son­ja Müller, Noga Or Yam, Naa­ma Roth, Karoli­na Gaja Rup­nik Caru­so, Rotem Volk, Maayan Danoch

2021, April 20

Noga and I «Arm Reach­ing» Studio

With closed eyes, Noga and I are try­ing to lift our right arm as if we want to touch the other’s shoul­der. We try to do the action at the same time.

Noga and I «Con­ver­sa­tion Excerpt»

What is the dif­fer­ence between prac­tic­ing with a part­ner, who is present with you in the stu­dio or with a part­ner via zoom?

Noga: It is dif­fer­ent but it doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that one con­di­tion is bet­ter than anoth­er for suc­ceed­ing in the task. I thought that it would be eas­i­er for me to pre­dict the next of move of the per­son stand­ing right next to me. But in fact, it wasn’t. There was not such a big gap in the results of the two expe­ri­ences. Nonethe­less, I do think that shar­ing the same space or not with the oth­er per­son does make a dif­fer­ence. I found myself think­ing a lot about the space, in which we are in and what it allows us to do. Work­ing with Son­ja (zoom part­ner), I had to imag­ine her and her space much more because I can only see her flat on the screen. Your pres­ence (Maayan’s — part­ner in the stu­dio) and ener­gy were much more tan­gi­ble to me than Son­ja’s, but as I said, feel­ing you didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly help me to pre­dict what you will do next. This expe­ri­ence made me think about how much we imag­ine as part of our real­i­ty. My imag­i­na­tion was very much active in both cas­es. It was inter­est­ing because in any case it made it clear that we very much set an inten­tion and act out of our own body.

Maayan: I think you need a lot of trust to try to do an exer­cise like this. The exer­cis­es are sim­ple but also dif­fi­cult. There’s this need for them to work, for us to suc­ceed and some­times it doesn’t help. Some­times it helps to do some­thing with­out being both­ered what’s the out­come. The reduc­tion of the feel­ing on zoom is dra­mat­ic and I hate it. But on the oth­er hand, I feel it allows a cer­tain dis­tance so suc­ceed­ing in the task isn’t that dra­mat­ic. I see it also in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions, how cer­tain dia­logues become pos­si­ble when one feels a cer­tain dis­tance that allows one­self to be a bit more com­fort­able. The close­ness in some sit­u­a­tions can also become a bar­ri­er because some­times things can become more real than are, more risky and so it becomes dif­fi­cult to be at ease and make space to sim­ply be next to anoth­er per­son, feel the oth­er per­son and act from a shared place.

Noga: With that said, I think that what is dif­fi­cult on zoom is that you see your­self. You can wit­ness your­self in a sit­u­a­tion but almost from the out­side. It is very dif­fi­cult for me to see myself because I become busy with it, with how I am in a sit­u­a­tion, which is some­thing I don’t think about in dai­ly life.

Maayan: That is the oth­er side of the coin. An extra dose of self con­scious­ness can also become a barrier.

Rotem and I «What’s Next – open eyes» Studio 

Start­ing from the same posi­tion, Rotem and I try to imag­ine a move­ment we are both going to do. Then we both try to do what we imag­ined at the same time, with­out adjust­ing it in real time. When we fin­ish mov­ing, we return back to the same start­ing point, and repeat the exer­cise few times. Will we suc­ceed? How do you/we eval­u­ate suc­cess? Can you iden­ti­fy moments, in which we might no do the exact same move­ment, how­ev­er, you feel a syn­chronic­i­ty between us? What sim­i­lar­i­ties can you find in what we do?

Rotem and I «What’s Next – closed eyes» Studio 

Rotem and I repeat the pre­vi­ous exer­cise but this time with closed eyes. Will we be more or less syn­chro­nised? See­ing each oth­er gives us a clear­er sense what the oth­er is doing, where did she move, how quick or slow, etc. We can study our part­ner and in time might achieve more in synched actions and inten­tions. Peo­ple say, if you want to be able to pre­dict the future, we need to become aware of max­i­mum pos­si­bil­i­ties. No human can pre­dict all pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios. We know too lit­tle. How much of this prac­tice is based on study­ing prob­a­bil­i­ties or on intu­itive choice mak­ing? Are the ana­lyt­ic and intu­itive dis­tinc­tive­ly dif­fer­ent? Per­haps.. but they def­i­nite­ly rely, lean and feed one anoth­er. Per­haps the intu­itive choice is only clas­si­fied as such because its under­ly­ing sense remains still a mys­tery to us, a rid­dle, unsolved or hidden.

2021, April 26

Naa­ma and I «What’s Next – closed eyes» Zoom 

With eyes closed and via zoom, Naa­ma and I ry to imag­ine a move­ment we are both going to do. Then we both try to do what we imag­ined at the same time, with­out adjust­ing it in real time. When we fin­ish mov­ing, we return back to the same start­ing point, and repeat the exer­cise few times.

Though we didn’t man­age to per­form the same move­ment and wasn’t always synched in time, what I find inter­est­ing is that I still do get a sense of con­ti­nu­ity with­in our choic­es. In exam­ple, in 00:30 Naa­ma is tilt­ing to the left size, leav­ing the arms up as if she’s mov­ing the whole start­ing point to the side. Fol­low­ing that I bend to the front, let­ting the arms that are extend­ed upwards to fol­low the curve. The two move­ments might no be same, how­ev­er, they fol­low the prin­ci­ple of shift­ing, bend­ing the tor­so some­where and let­ting the arms come with it. Naama’s next move is inter­lac­ing the fin­gers (00:48), flip­ping them to the ceil­ing. My next move is hold­ing the right wrist with the left hand (01:00). Though these are two dif­fer­ent actions, I see the hands as a shared motif for both. I find more con­nec­tions as such to fol­low, either in the tim­ing of the actions, their order of motif but espe­cial­ly in that syn­chro­nous open­ing of the eyes as a sign of ending.

Mia and Tea «What’s Next – closed eyes» Zoom

Mia and Tea are fol­low­ing the same exer­cise as described in doc­u­ment 4. They are both is eyes closed, how­ev­er, this time we defined the right arm as the motif of all move­ments in this exer­cise. This addi­tion­al lim­i­ta­tion reduces the par­tic­i­pants’ move­ment pos­si­bil­i­ty in order to help them achieve total syn­chronic­i­ty (in all move­ment para­me­ters). In this take, I believe we can wit­ness an obvi­ous gap/difference in Tea’s (on the left side of the screen) and Mia’s (on the right) sense of time. But sud­den­ly, quite in the begin­ning, occurs a clear mag­i­cal moment of togeth­er­ness both in the total form and time of fin­ish­ing the action. I was touched.

Gaja, Mia, Tea and I «Con­ver­sa­tion Excerpt» Zoom

An excerpt from a con­ver­sa­tion between Gaja, Mia, Tea and I about the dif­fer­ence between prac­tic­ing the exer­cis­es via zoom or in the pres­ence of oth­ers in the stu­dio. Gaja, Mia and Tea par­tic­i­pat­ed in Telepa­thy Works work­shop, which took place in Fronta Fes­ti­val for Con­tem­po­rary Dance in Murs­ka Sob­o­ta in Sum­mer 2019. The work­shop was con­clud­ed in a per­for­mance in a pub­lic space. In the con­ver­sa­tion, they com­pare our zoom prac­tice ses­sion to their expe­ri­ence in the sum­mer two years ago and how they inte­grate the mem­o­ry of the live prac­tice in the zoom session.